Falls, slips and trips are the most common type of accident and injury in the home. For elderly and physically limited persons, even minor falls can lead to a fear of falling again, and a tendency towards reducing physical activity. Such individuals also typically live in private homes, and are typically confined to one story of such homes except for relatively rare occasions when one or more persons are available to help them up or down the stairs to another story. In much too large a number of cases, this results in the older or other disadvantaged person living out a very major portion of his or her life on an upper story without substantial meaningful contact with people other than the immediate family.
Numerous devices exist in the prior art which provide structures to aid persons with walking disabilities or difficulties to traverse stairways. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,253,287 to Overmoe discloses a walking bar for aiding persons to climb or descend stairs which can be moved along a stairway one step at a time. The Overmoe apparatus includes a pair of guide railings at opposing sides of a stairway, each with a guide slot, and a walking bar which fits into the guide slots for the user to hold onto. One of the distinguishing features of the Overmoe apparatus is that the path made by the guide slots are typically arched in shape and lead to ratchet tooth holding sections in which the walking bar sits at the conclusion of each step. With this arrangement, it is difficult for the user to move more than a single step at a time without stopping their movement, readjusting their grip and their stance, lifting the bar out of the holding section, over the next arch and into the next holding section, and moving to the next step. It would therefore be beneficial to provide a device which can easily be moved in a straight line along the entire length of a stairway by a user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,227 to Warren discloses a motorized, portable, upper body support device which can be used transferably with a virtually unlimited number of different stairways. Both Warren and Overmoe require the user to attach and detach the support device before and after each use, and to remember to carry the support device around with them from stairway to stairway. Further, the Warren support includes a motor which is not small or light in weight. It would therefore be beneficial to provide a light weight apparatus that can bear substantially the entire weight of the user while climbing and descending stairways, and that can be placed in a vertical position to the side of the stairway when not in use, without having to detach the support bar from the guide rail.